History
That the concept of form is fundamental to logic was already recognized in ancient times. Aristotle was probably the first to employ variable letters to represent valid inferences (in the Prior analytics). (For which reason Łukasiewicz says that the introduction of variables was 'one of Aristotle's greatest inventions').
According to the followers of Aristotle (such as Ammonius), only the logical principles stated in schematic terms belong to logic, and not those given in concrete terms. The concrete terms man, mortal, etc., are analogous to the substitution values of the schematic placeholders 'A', 'B', 'C', which were called the 'matter' (Greek hyle, Latin materia) of the argument.
The term "logical form" was introduced by Bertrand Russell in 1914, in the context of his program to formalize natural language and reasoning, which he called philosophical logic. Russell wrote: "Some kind of knowledge of logical forms, though with most people it is not explicit, is involved in in all understanding of discourse. It is the business of philosophical logic to extract this knowledge from its concrete integuments, and to render it explicit and pure."
Read more about this topic: Logical Form
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)